Jiujitsu, Ketamine, and the Art of Coming Back

Wow. That’s the only word I can think of. It took me nearly a year to understand just how truly beautiful a ketamine journey is. I don’t even know how to describe it. I wish everyone could experience this level of healing—this bird’s-eye view of your own life, where even your pain starts to make sense. Where it doesn’t crush you anymore. And I couldn’t have done it without my favorite ketamine song:

 Passage

 I wrote a previous post about it here.

 Lately, my traumas have been screaming louder than usual. I visited Pitada Brazil with my mom. It was such a sweet experience—the food was amazing. I finally shared with her a song I heard on the radio the last time I visited my grandparents.

 Then I ran into an old assistant from jiujitsu. It stirred up memories of a version of me I’d left behind. I reconnected with my instructor. I felt so good about it—like pieces of myself were finally reintegrating. I was starting to feel unstuck. So I shared a message in our group chat: a heartfelt reflection on returning to jiujitsu, how it’s become part of my ketamine integration, and how much it’s meant to me. 

 No one responded. And then my instructor didn’t reply to an important question either. 

 Cue the RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria)—that firestorm of pain when it feels like everything is crumbling, even if nothing’s technically wrong. I was triggered by everything: rude drivers, rude customers, even silence. It all touched the same nerve: “You don’t matter.” 

 So I took it into a ketamine session. I brought all of it—every unanswered message, every invisible wound. And the medicine held it all with gentleness. It reminded me: silence doesn’t always mean they don’t care. Sometimes people freeze. Sometimes life is too loud. Sometimes they’re just scared to say the wrong thing. 

 That session showed me how to embrace the messiness of relationships.

 And yeah—it still hurt. But the point isn’t to avoid pain (or assign blame or shame). 

It’s to alchemize it.

To breathe into it. To hold space for it without being consumed. 

 Jiujitsu does the same thing for me. It’s not just exercise—it’s a moving meditation. It’s breathwork. It’s discipline. It’s something deeply Brazilian that grounds me in my body and my culture.

 It complements ketamine perfectly.

 One takes me out of my body to show me the map. The other grounds me back into the terrain. 

 That’s the lesson I had to learn with ketamine: You process things. You integrate. You’re broken apart—and then you’re put back together. 

 If you’re curious about this kind of healing, I can’t recommend Better U enough. Go to betterucare.com Use my promo code NANDO84 to get started with $100 discount—it could change your life the way it’s changed mine.